You know that magical feeling when your space is just right, everything feels in its place, stuff is sparkling, and you are ready for your close-up for “Better Gardens and Apartments” — how the heck do you keep things tidy like that? Cause like, I wake up what feels the next day and shit is everywhere, the recycling hasn’t been taken out in two weeks and can only walk in paths to places.

This isn’t an article about how to unfuck the Slob Quake 9000, though I will put my spin on it in a later part, this is about HOW TO KEEP IT THAT WAY, or at least close. Ish.

The first thing that you need to do is start observing “where is all the shit flowing from and WHY”. Take a look at this desk on a random fucking Wednesday. Looks like Better Gardens & Apartments ready to me.

Oh wait. Maybe not.

As a full disclosure, I have only had that plant for about 12 hours. It's a goner.

My desk was always a mess. Food particles, beverages, tissues, junk just everywhere. And then came THE TRAY.

The tray provided me a functional limit as to how far I should go with random fucking shit on my desk and a visual cue of “I need to be taken out”. When I start having to “leaning tower of Pisa” design engineering how to fit another fucking plate or can of seltzer water I just give up and take my tray to the kitchen.

Do I neatly discard my trash and carefully recycle all my shit, piroureting back to my office? No. I just dump it in the kitchen on the usually available space in the kitchen — the stove. Future Megan is so much more capable of handling it from there.

Future Megan has asked in the past if I could sort trash/recycling/dishes a little bit more because it makes it easier for her to do her end, so I put the recycling to the side, and tried to corral the dishes to the other side with garbage left in the leftover cracks. I dumped the tray out in the garbage to get rid of the dried split peas (easier for future Megan and would bother me) and returned to work, now that the mess has been dealt with.

“But there's a gigantic mess in the kitchen.”

Nah, that is not the function thread. The amount of time it takes to actually clean this is too hard. Leave it in the kitchen and deal with it later

The Function Thread is that the level of energy, time, and effort to complete a thing, for me personally, needs to be UBER low. I can only sip executive function. This function thread is the ability to get crap off my desk as efficiently as possible for the least amount of effort possible.

The Tray allows me to seamlessly provide a “this needs to be cleaned” notification, an easy function for how to deal with it (it has handles so even a heavy tray laden with items can be carried the 10 feet to the kitchen), and even makes me laugh because I can call it something funny “fluffing my nest”.

Generally, I fluff my nests about once a week, and it’s 50/50 if its an item that needs to be tracked or if I just do it automatically when I feel like it or I can’t fill it further.

That being said, sometimes the entire house is a slob quake 9000. When that happens, fluff nests is definitely a checklist task item that is short to accomplish to get me going on tearing down the quake. This is probably the only time I actually get rid of the garbage and recycling immediately after bringing in my tray. The reason being is that it “dovetails” into “recycling and trash for the kitchen” beyond what I have strewn over my already messy kitchen counters. But this isn’t really about how to deal with slob quake, this is dealing with .5 to zero clutter.

The other place my nests need to go is next to my couch where I lounge. While I feel like the office / gaming space is something some people have, the couch is what a lot of people like me have. Also be aware I do not eat at a formal dining table during the week, we just eat at the couch sometimes with TV.

Do I pirouette to the kitchen with my dinner dishes after eating? Fuck NOOOOOOOO.

That being said, I do take out the tray around once a week. Dumping it on the stove.

Sometimes the mess is too big for just the stove, this can be challenging is the kitchen has become a mess.

And we have a clean space!

First off, a few disclaimers and tenants:

Communication is infinite. There are no seven words to make someone love you (Name of the Wind reference!). If there were, each seven would be unique words, inflections, meaning and feelings between each person’s seven words. I worry a bit about writing this article because it could be dangerous if taken incorrectly or to a bad place where people will gravitate to formulaic patterns in their speech.

There is nothing more important in your messaging than being genuine. Nothing. While I will talk about other things, if you close this article and just reach out with your heart with everything you got and be guided by all the wisdom in your head as consistently as you can, the rest is just getting better at it over time.

Always try to be concise and clear as you can, recognizing that clarity and being concise can and sometimes must be sacrificed to go into BIG GENUINE MEANING. Wisdom is recognizing when sacrifice is the right call and how much clarity and concisely worded prose is to be sacrificed. I use the word sacrifice because it refers to the old meaning of sacred. This is your words, sometimes spilling from your heart into the world. Treat them with the reverence they deserve.

So, how do you reach out to someone who is significantly above your skill and level? Generally I’m going to talk about when a mentee is seeking an initial coffee meeting with someone directly in their skill/profession. This isn’t someone who is in the process of hiring them, this is like “a coffee date”. It’s hilarious to me how much dating is similar in framework.

So, let’s write out an example:

Blue (They/Them) is a junior sound designer seeking a coffee meetup with Matt (He/Him) a substantially more experienced principal sound designer. They both enjoyed each other’s presence/conversation, maybe shaken hands at a meetup, say at GDC since it’s on my mind. They have exchanged contact info, let’s say LinkedIn and are connected. Blue now has the ability to send a message and we’ll say Matt has casually expressed he would be willing to hang out in the future.

Nadia Whetons article has some really fantastic mechanics about this, one of the best I’ve seen. While I am going to illustrate my own examples, definitely check it out.

Blue because they are a bit new to networking, sends a message like this:

“Hey Matt! It was really great meeting you at the Sound Designer’s mixer. I look forward to hanging out sometime.”

See, Blue is a bit nervous and anxious about this. Matt is a BIG FUCKING DEAL. He has shipped THE COOL GAME and it sounds FUCKING INCREDIBLE. Blue would love to work with Matt, YEARNS to work with Matt. It took everything in Blue’s heart to get the message out and all the courage down to their toes to hit enter. They seriously crawled into a ball afterwards in their bed and prayed for good weather and positive vibes that Matt responds. What Blue doesn’t realize is that they could increase their chances of success by slowing down, breathing deep and THINKING before sending the message. Right now they are operating on pure chance, rather than something I call manufactured chance.

Context in Time

Blue sent their message the evening after they met, even minutes after. This is the most common mistake mentees make. It’s SO EXCITING to meet Matt, he’s so fucking COOL. Exuberance just flows from Blue. It’s totally ok for Blue to bask in that wonder, but waiting until they can wiggle their excitement down to a 6/10 scale is definitely WISER, because their language can become more GENUINE. Blue should wait 14 days before sending their message, generally speaking. Common exception : Matt has asked for something on a particular time cadence “Hey, I’m flying out on Sunday and I would love to read your article on the way home”. That is full permission to violate the 14 day cool down guideline. That message should be SHORT and probably give only exactly what asked for, like this example: “Hey Matt! Here’s the link to the article[hyperlinked is great]. It was really fantastic to meet you and I’ll follow up in a couple of weeks, if that’s ok. Hope you have a safe trip!”

“Pink” Language

One of the more weirder ideas I have about messaging is this concept of Pink Language. One of the things that sucks about sexism is that we often as a society socialize femme folks to act inferior to masc folks, which is why I use the pink color as an example, as pink is a common color in Western culture that is attributed to the feminine. This socialization is expressed a lot in femme writing patterns and while I developed the framework in a gendered context, it honestly can be extended to any power dynamic, in my personal opinion. In the above message to Matt, Blue wrote:

“It was really fantastic to meet you and I’ll follow up in a couple of weeks, if that’s ok.”

“if that’s ok” is Pink Language. Blue might be trying to socially give Matt some space socially and trying not to be too clingy. But forcing oneself to be small isn’t the way to foster GENUINE connection to Matt.

It’s important to try to walk Pink Language back if you can, but don’t try to eliminate it entirely. Think of it like cultivating a bonsai, clipping a few little phrases away with little shears to shape your words into a beautiful shape, not using a flamethrower.

I personally feel in this example, Blue should try to write “if that’s cool” in order to get better. Super bonus points if they can manage the courage to write without any obvious Pink Language. I also feel writing drafts with Pink Language is totally fine, edits and second passes are where it’s good to get it out. A genuine sent message with a flaw in it is better than a message never sent because the sender got too scared. This is manufactured chance, not perfection.

Split Close

This is a little trick I’ve learned from sales, and it comes from things I’ve heard about around good parenting. A parent is trying to get their child to drink some milk, but the child has been demanding juice or soda a lot recently. Children, like adults, likes choice and power. What the parent will do is ask the child, “would you like to drink your milk in the red cup or the blue cup?”

The child now feels they have a choice, and theoretically it’s something that matters to them — blue cup rules. The parent doesn’t care at all about the blue cup or the red cup. All they want is the child to drink their milk. The reality I bet is a bit more messy and much more negotiating (because juice is fucking lit guys) but I have never raised a child and can only speculate.

Where this intersects with Blue and Matt, and how we translate that to real life is that Blue wants to meet Matt. That is all they want. So, Blue can do a split close on the TIME of the meet. For example:

“Hey Matt! It was so great to meet you at GDC[14 ish days ago]. Would you be up for coffee sometime? I’m free next week Tuesday at 10am EST or Friday at 3PM EST. Thanks!”

Matt can now check his calendar and see that he’s free next Friday and can easily communicate he’s available.

But what can Blue do better?

First off, this is a good message, better than most I receive. If Blue is doing this good they’re in a good spot.

This message is a bit…. clinical. Some people prefer clinical messaging, especially people who are busy or juggling a lot of different things. Some people want to feel the warm chocolate chip cookie snugglies. It’s on Blue to learn and get better with when to break out the logistics language and when to break out the sentiment cookies.

Another flaw in this message is it’s a bit general. Matt 100% remembers Blue, they clicked, it’s good. But specific trumps general I feel like, most times.

Something like this is better:

“Hey Matt! I really had a great time meeting you at the sound designer’s meetup[14+ days ago]. I had a question, when you said you use a multiband compressor on the your bus structure to gently tuck and mix things together, how does that actually calculate at runtime? Does each compressor compute separately for each frame like a dsp effect? If you have some time for a coffee, I am free Tuesday at 2pm PST or Thursday at 9AM PST. It was really amazing meeting you; I had no idea how deep this stuff goes.”

Questions like this need to showcase at least some thought, and are not easily Google-able. The better Blue’s question allows Matt to showcase his expertise, and shows they did their homework and have deeply tried to put something together that is thoughtful, condensed, and carefully worded will manufacture higher chance Matt will reach out.

There’s more but that’s the time I got from my plane ride home. Best of luck folks, and don’t forget to be genuine.

How To Be a Better Mentee: How to Request a Meeting was originally published in Art Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

https://cacm.acm.org/news/the-ai-deskilling-paradox/

This is a better article that writes about the phenomenon than I could probably manage with my current writing skills. The part of it that interests me is the idea that Generative AI makes things “cognitively easier,” but ultimately atrophies and weakens the baseline cognitive muscles around skills, which is sort of existentially terrifying. It makes sense to me though, anecdoctally, through my experiences as an artist with my growth as an athlete (please note I use the term athlete extremely generously). It makes fundamental sense to me that “use it or lose it” would apply to cognition just the same as musculature.

In weightlifting, I observed in the book Starting Strength that there is a nebulous concept in programming of Max Rep. Programming here is referring to physical programming, or ad libbed, having a process with your physical schedule. For example, in weightlifting, what is the max weight you are lifting, how many times, how much rest in between, what supportive alternative muscle reps, etc. In running, I generally observe this as “how far can I go without stopping” with a few granulations of “how fast can I go for X distance” X being generally significantly shorter than the Y of total distance.

Within cognition, I would say there is a similar thing of “solving a problem of X difficulty”. If I cannot surmount that problem, that doesn’t mean I am stupid or incapable (though I have hard cognitive limits somewhere) but it does mean that my cognitive growth needs to expand, grow, extend, what have you in order to get past said problem. For me personally, it also deals with the ability to emotionally regulate effectively, as my cognition gets extremely limited if my emotional cortex is overstimulated. Over the past 5-ish years, I have been on a journey in understanding executive function and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, mostly through popular science but a bit into the white paper here and there.

I know I’ve gotten a bit off base, and I’m going to wind my way back to AI. We know AI causes deskilling because it is causing you to not do the work mentally. The art is just the receipts of the work you put into it. Another somewhat side effect of automating out the drugery bits are that all the problems that will be left are theoretically high cognitive load problems. Solving smaller problems allows you to dive into harder ones. Even within a day, not just in general. When I have a solid terrifyingly difficult technical problem, I generally start with very easy small bits of it before I can dive into the mega hard difficult portion. If AI automates out all of those little things, I would be worried only the hard stuff will be left.

The other serious worry I have is nebulous future generations not understanding how absolutely scary AI deskilling can be. One of my mentees sent me a cold pitch that was very obviously AI-assisted. I was flabbergasted in that if you are utilizing AI in skills you are trying to learn, you are absolutely going to have a rough time of it. How can you learn what is good and bad without failure and the sweat and effort it takes to make stuff? Not to mention losing the vigor it takes to punch through the hard bits. You only do that by blowing up metaphorical walls and doors and getting good. I dunno, I worry a bit AI is going to be gen z’s cigarettes.

I don’t think I need to upskill everything in my life, but I think being very judicious in what to upskill and feel comfortable in what to accept as de-skill is probably my choice before me. I am never going to be a doctor, it’s probably ok for me to learn about different basic anatomy bits from an AI summary before going to an actual doctor so I can ask better questions and utilize our time a bit better. A few months ago I would have said metadata, but after Nathan Moody was so kind to help me through the harder bits, I’d say I need to upskill the metadata pipeline before considering utilizing AI.

As a final closing note — AI is pretty good at describing where that one weird ingredient you are looking for is located in the grocery store. As I am not in the business of being a grocer, at least for the moment, I think that makes sense as a good use for it.

No, this is when the Muse has left me.

It feels like abandonment and every time it happens, I worry it will never return. That I used the last of the blissful lurid sound up, somehow. I know for a fact that it’s ridiculous, though writing it out helps clarify it.

Still doesn’t change the day being a bit beige, my world being a bit sepia while I scramble with literal interpretations of my sounds and piece together admin work to try and shore up the gap until the Muse returns.

I always feel guilt for my client or employer on these days though. Never can shake it. That they trusted me to be able to get into flow, to catch sounds through the aetheric sonic windscapes, and to just get stuck. Not because of my inability to take care of myself, or manage my shit, but because sometimes stuff just goes plum bad. It just seems so unfair.

I’ve been leading two subcontractor folks for a client since I’m a bit overbooked with Skywalker on my plate. It’s weird to finally see the other side of management, to guide two people through the struggles of the job. Something happened that was going to affect the weeks deliverable, and it wasn’t a big deal at all for me. It wasn’t personal. But when something happens on my desk, and I’m sweating bullets that my boss is going to manager panic, it’s 100% this gigantic deal that will sever our relationship forever hyperbole.

I don’t know what I’d say to a sound designer whom I employ who’s muse left them for a bit. I hope I’d be kind. I think of all the things, learning solid project management and making sure there is enough PTO in the bank is a solid business requirement for creative things.

Money and the Art: When the Muse is Absent was originally published in Art Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m so proud of my run, I finally popped past 2 miles and cleared 11:38 pacing on my first mile. 5K is within my grasp for taking, and it’s glorious.

But what I want to write about is more the day before. I was on a call with my colleague Nathan Moody, and it was one of those lovely sound design vibe calls where you’re talking about EVERYTHING and ART and MAGIC. I was sort of watching the sun set, a violent pink corona of clouds fading into gold into blue over a blue lake on a bench. I knew watching the fading light I probably wasn’t going on my run, but blissfully throwing the daylight into the proverbial dumpster fire and just…being. Embracing the moment life gave me, not the one I wanted or planned.

And I didn’t run that day — I still took care of my body by walking, we just didn’t exert. I nourished the other part of myself, the artistic soul. And while my internal project manager's mouth was crooked in an unhappy frown, it was enough for that day.

And the next day, I just was able to go HARD. I did actually have to walk after 15 minutes straight running for a min, but we DID the THING. THE THING WAS DONE.

I couldn’t see as I walked home in the dark that night that tomorrow I would be able to get Week 7, Day 1 on the books. All I could see was that I had already attempted it twice and failed out. I could only see that I’ve been struggling on my runs, my diet, in my technical work recently. Perspective can sometimes be SO HARD.

This is a lovely video that seems to be talking about AI — I would argue it’s not, it's actually just talking about art and uses AI to make a point.

Art is the means by which we become what we want to be.

When I take care of my body or “self” by feeding it good food, by giving it strenuous exercise to achieve things, by challenging it with mental puzzles, and allowing its very soul to expand into this reality, it’s all just ART. These things are just so interrelated.

The body is a window into the creative soul. We have lungs to teach us that Art is INHALE and EXHALE. We must sit at a bench and wax poetic of concrete monster screams before the glory and wonder of the dying light in order to exhale a beautiful, furious exertion on the body.

Gordon McGladdery from A Shell in the Pit once made a comment something like [PARAPHRASED] “as a sound designer, you can’t expect fantastic work out of someone who is working constant overtime, eating stale fish sandwich takeout and coffee never seeing the light of day”. It was spoken as to why he founded A Shell in the Pit as a sustainable place to work. It’s just good business.

When we rest, we rest to inhale for a triumphant exhale. To inhale again. And back again.

Why We Rest as Artists was originally published in Art Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I need to be incredibly clear, I am beyond ok and frankly shouldn’t bellyache about anything — so many people are in way WAAAAAY worse position from me in games right now. But I wanted to write about an interesting change in my relationship with money I’ve felt recently, and how I’m curious it will shape my relationship with the art.

I’ve actually pretty much always been decently good with money. I’ve always managed to find it when I really needed it, I’ve been sharp enough to figure out how to get paid more from a skill perspective, and I’ve been lucky to have mentors in negotiation so getting more of it is more common. It cannot be understated that some amount of this is privilege, but which parts or how much, I don’t know.

When I was coming out of college, I owed 32K to the government and 30K to another party. I read a stat awhile back that apparently in 2012 that 32K was average. Like most folks in post-college age, I was basically broke as a joke, but I was very fortunate to graduate with a job in sales. I wanted nothing more to get free of that debt so I could start my life. I felt the debt was between me and living the life I wanted to live. I dialed on average 77 calls a day in order to get out of it for 3 years, honing my skills as a recruiter. I was pretty decent at the job and paid off my government debt in 3 years, and a situation arose that cleared the other debt from my plate, which came about 18 months later(this part is drenched in privilege). Basically, when I budgeted during these first three years, my sole focus was to maximize the amount of money I could sock away for the debt. I called it “super ultimate hobo mode” because it made me snicker as “being a responsi-bibble adult” wasn’t enough for me.

Couple things I would still spend on “frivolously” during this time (there was absolutely more, but I wanted to give perspective):
1) would buy 1 pizza delivery per month.

2) I would go to hang out with my friends in Seattle, road trip style, 2x a year, one time for PAX Prime, one time for just board games.

3) I bought my first really nice desktop out of my first commission rather than chucking it at the debt.

Post debt me occasionally would get a bit wild in her spending (I like fancy shit guys) but I always could just get a coffee at a fantastic cafe, look over my budget, recenter, chide myself and initiate super ultimate hobo mode to correct it and 60 days later I was right as rain and free to spend my crazy bullshit as much as I felt I wanted.

But this last 12 months had a lot of stuff happen. I’m 90 days into super ultimate hobo mode and I’m not anwhere near close to be able to come out of it for 2026. Probably not till 2027.

Again, this isn’t a pity party, oh boo hoo me. It’s starting to change the way I feel about….well, money…a bit, and I’m curious how that change is going to affect how my relationship with money and the art goes.

Yesterday I got a breakfast sandwich and an espresso macchiato at a lovely cafe so close to me it’s dangerous for my wallet. It was delightful! And I really really enjoyed it. WAY more than normal. I used to go quite easily 2 times a week, more if I got anxious and needed to relax outside of my house. It was strange to feel how the absence of something could change how I interacted with it.

It reminds me of a Buddhism book I read a long time ago as a child, where it talked about if you bought a $20 coffee (which in 2000 was probably like $80–100 today), you would deeply savor each drop, if that was a special experience for you. The book described the person who experienced that as a daily thing wouldn’t neccessarily experience the lifechanging mind blowing coffee. It’s also very strange that the things I’m grateful for now are decently far away from money and physical things, in general. The things I’m fantasizing now about spending wild amounts of errant spending more relate to how I could spend my time and with whom I could spend my time.

But what about the Art? See with the art, there’s this strange inverse relationship. The more I record, the more it sort of affects and amplifies the rest of my pipeline. I’ll be solving some problem — how do I make this monster roar more scary, and I’ll think back to when I was scraping wood with a garden implement. With the art, it’s like each recording is a noun, and each set of recordings generate verbs and adverbs.

With any language, (mostly)daily practice is essential. Play around with a new noun. Each day. When I was learning Mandarin full time, learning 25 new words a day was the bar. It was called the intensive for a reason. 25 words a day was like real fast to competency. I feel 25 recordings a day could be the same thing.

Apologies folks for something of a rambling article. Money and art are a touchy thing, and I felt a sketch of it might bring clarity to your own life and journey.

Money and the Art : Part 1 — Lentil Vacation was originally published in Art Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It was a fantastic idea, and so far in the process, I feel I have gotten some good sounds out of it. But sitting on my couch on Monday around 4PM, I was stuck. I was tired, it was dark and cold outside, and I wanted to just veg in front of the TV for ~5 hours. I didn’t wanna go to the store and get hot dogs and jello. I just didn’t wanna.

I get frustrated when I “don’t wanna”. Part of this is because my parents constantly accused me of being a lazy person during my upbringing. Make a mistake? Lazy. Need to rest because you are legit exhausted? Lazy. Inconvenienced someone? Lazy. Something bad that you had no control over happened? Lazy.

Lazy. Lazy. Lazy.

It was such bullshit, and its greasy miasma still haunts a corner or two of my brain.

In my current journey with therapy, building a sustainable life as an artist is one of my primary areas of exploration this year. It is a yellow endeavor. When I was sitting on the couch that evening, all I could hear was the nagging voice that I was allowing my inner child to be lazy, because the child was refusing to record anything other than Jello. Complete artistic fixation on rolling my face in a trough full of jello.

As a parent to my inner child, I refuse to force my child to play. In a way, I am willfully refusing to suffer for my art.

See, the person who is doing these recordings and excitedly proposing these amazing ideas is my inner kid. And I got to provide the right environment for the kid to do amazing play. Forcing the issue should be done only in times of great, powerful need and for short periods.

But letting my kid off the hook to do nothing and just watch TV might not have been the right call either. I felt it in my gut; it was the wrong call, but a minorly wrong one.

Some sounds can be just “found props” of stuff you have in your house. Stuff that is just soooooo easy. And then sometimes you have to go to the store or do something beforehand like a 30 min task to start recording. And sometimes you have to like fully set up the trip or any number of planned things that take project management, dedication and tons of stuff to do.

I was lucky enough to have a few minutes with a colleague of mine the next day, Nathan Moody, who is widely known as one of the best recordists in the biz. I explained the predicament of having this weird “artistic fixation” where I was unable to pivot into anything else until that particular itch had been scratched. I also observed how some sounds were really easy to get out, “stuff around your house” vs things that required project management.

He had an amazing piece of advice on growing your mental flexibility in relation to the art. He related a story about growing as a field recordist doing nature ambiences and getting SO frustrated when an airplane flew overhead. One day, he just pointed his mic up and decided he was recording airplanes in that moment. And to his surprise, it was a really good recording of an airplane overhead.

This kind of mental flexibility is a really interesting thread that relates to a ton of things I see from the masters of the craft. See, I’m intermediate. Mid tier. I got enough experience that I am no beginner, I can hold my own weight and kick ass in my own right, but I am no master.

Masters often don’t really care about the tools. They have ones they like and use, but just as often are they big expensive things as they are dorky musty old tools that get the job done and have for 30 years.

Nathan encouraged me to be comfortable with failing because it teaches you flexibility, even if it takes years of practice. Good thing I’m a lifelong student of the art.

When life sends you airplanes, point the mic at them. was originally published in Art Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Yellow is an elusive color. It’s a gentle color.

Yellow is the warmth of a sunbeam that peals through a window in a quiet living room.

Yellow is the sound of the birds announcing the dawn’s beginning.

Yellow is the feeling of a mentor gently guiding a mentee out of a place of anxiety.

Yellow tastes of lemonade, a harmony between sweet and sour.

Play comes from a yellow place in one’s heart.

Playing being yellow has interested me greatly for this next year. One of the things I am working on creatively is this relationship between work, or at least effort, and true play.

Play for me can be surprisingly challenging sometimes to coax myself into.

First, the easy obvious reason why play is hard to coax out: a lot of work in life is objectively important. This importance leads to a psychological safety — it’s safe to work on something public, boring and necessary. But this work becomes a bit more performative in my experience when you are not solidly confident in yourself. Recently I had to make a spreadsheet of stuff needed for the game demo I am currently working on. I got to the place where I was mostly good, but I started to fine comb a little, justifying it as being thorough. I could feel the pressure in my guts to just make something, or fix something directly.

Playing with the sounds feels way riskier than doing “the adult bits” sometimes, regardless if that bit of the project is objectively as important to the success of the game.

My play as a child evolved as a silent activity. Because of this, playing while making sounds can sometimes be a source of fear for me. Therapy has helped immensely with managing the experience and colors of those feelings.

Why am I talking about something so personal?

The truth of it is, regardless of how you’ve gotten to where you are, many artists struggle with play, in my observation. They hide behind needing something important or necessary to justify the fun bits of the art. You don’t need a sad or tragic backstory to struggle with finding play. Because I have one though, I have a functionally easier time talking about the process of chasing after my yellow, and the process of redevelopment of play into an artists journey.

“Create a little bit, every day, without hope, and without despair.”
-Karen Blixen (paraphrased)

While this quote was given to me recently, it articulates something I’ve observed about incorporating play into your daily practice.

The largest project I have taken on to incorporate daily play into my workflow, is my first commercial library, MURDER STUFFIE GORE. When I started, I put a ton of emphasis on feeling positive when recording. Safe. Warm. Fun.

Use things that make you smile!

I have these special fuzzy slippers with chickens on them. Chickens are the best for keeping away negative feelings.

Make it easy to initiate

Another thing I put a huge emphasis on was figuring out how to make it easy to start or initiate recording. When I first started I was using only my portable recorder Larry, who is a PCM d100. Larry has many positive feelings that surround him and it’s wonderful to see and hear how he listens to things.

I had to keep on taking out the little sd card to put in my card reader on my computer, so I started switching between two. Then I found a cable that could just directly initiate the process. then I realized it was too much effort to do even that, so I hooked up my interface directly into Reaper connected to my Sennheiser 8060. Now, if I want to record a sound, I click the record button on a new project in Reaper. That is currently my fastest way to initiate recording — have it streamlined to a single button.

Have a prop ready to go for tomorrow

I have this large L desk and more in the beginning I would have a prop waiting right next to Larry ready to record on the unused L portion of my desk. This is a great way to get started! Focusing on “closing out” your recordings by setting your recorder down with the next prop — anything really, reduces the executive function for the next initiation. When I’m recording, I’m thinking about what to record next anyway. It also was a great way to keep my desk cleaned.

Keeping your room clean

I found my audio room being messy, especially the shag carpet I have having twigs and dirt and stuff, very upsetting. If anyone has a suggestion towards how to keep stuff clean and neat gawd above contact me! I can’t really suggest anything to fix the daily cleanings — don’t pick shag unless you can vacuum weekly without fail, even if it does sound better. A drop cloth is an amazing way to keep the mess hosted to a much more manageable effort to clean. I still find some of the Stuffie stuffing guts here and there from various Stuffie carcasses I’ve disemboweled before I had my drop cloth. This was semi frozen pasta in oil.

Ceremonial Battle Showers

One thing I enjoyed doing with league of legends was taking a hot shower before my matches. This puts my mental in a solid neutral place, lets me wash away the thoughts of the day and resets me for the new activity. Putting on my fuzzy robe and my slippers gets me in the feeling of initiate, especially now that I’ve done it so many times that way.

Inner Child and Parent

One of the things that’s a bit weird about the recording process is that I feel like a kid sometimes but I have to sort of switch back into parent mode afterwards to clean up my inner child’s mess. Things like the drop cloth make it a lot easier to transition, but it’s not a perfect system. I’ve found editing is very much an adult activity, and I have a lot of trouble switching into that part of it the same day. I’ve started to incorporate separation in my pipelines a little but I haven’t found the trick just yet. For example, one thing I’m trying next is to do the recording, then go exercise. The natural dopamine of exercise makes me a lot more favorably mentally to adult processes like editing because I physically feel great.

Feeling less positive

While I do think that might have been a great first step for me to emphasize feeling positive towards my recording activities, I started to feel something in the back of my mind around recording that felt like forced positivity. While I think that starting out with this mindset came from a good place, and I obviously have a decent amount of stuff I worked through, the reality is that this process did significantly slow me down and I wasn’t very consistent in recording. I would have a good week here or there, but it was largely sporadic. I was really grateful that I recorded significantly more last year than I had since when I first started in game audio, but I was dissatisfied that I didn’t have the ability to release a final library on Halloween like I planned to. Blixen’s quote really exemplifies the opposite part of the equation for me — to record without hope. To not have this preconceived notion of one thing or another. To just record stuff. The end goal being to make something small basically every day.

Chasing Yellow: Playing and the Art. was originally published in Art Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I didn’t really know how to fix this, and I felt this felt flossing was falling into that horrible category of stuff: Important but Not Urgent or IBNU’s.

IBNU’s are the bane of many people’s existence. Excercise, eating right, floss, smelling the roses, all that stuff a good mom says to do but like, get real right? Ain’t no one got time for that shit.

I decided I can’t do all the IBNU’s but I can BALANCE some in on a regular cadence. A habit if you will. My first habit I seriously set out to do, and while it is not PERFECT, it is significantly more advanced that 5 years ago is DRINKING WATER. If you are not just like, in tune with your thirst like me, saddle up dear reader we are goin’ on a RIDE.

I realized one day sipping on some water out of this wonderful Ember mug my fiance got me for Christmas that I had cracked the water code — I liked hot water in the winter, and COLD water in the summer. So, I bought three glass flasks with this cute bamboo lid and keep those chilled in the fridge every summer, usually late April, and I keep a gooseneck Fellow Kettle that makes me smile when I look at it year round next to my desk (I only fill it in winter). Suddenly I felt ZERO guilt for never managing to drink water — this super basic human thing that normal people “just do”. I had to change my water habits every 6 months or so, NO WONDER I could never keep the consistent pattern. DUH.

So, uh,if any of you know how to drink water in spring or fall, let me know.

Regardless this is about flossing and how this relates to making great sounds. So, I needed to repair my flossing system, but none of my old standby’s were working. Buying new fancy floss and having it next to the TV when I watch a show for 20 mins during lunch wasn’t cutting it anymore.

I was looking at my medication one day when my eyes gazed at my toothbrush and it was like a shotgun went of into my head. I have a SUPER amazing system for taking my meds, it’s got great built in redundancies and hasn’t failed yet in the last 3+ months. I could just brush my teeth then floss on my walk back to my desk after I take my meds.

So, its a bit early to report on this since it has only been like two weeks, but I have flossed and brushed two times a day for legit 14 days. Guys, your teeth feel like post-dentist clean if you brush 2x daily. Just a heads up. My mouth feels insanely clean. Legit, no shit, I was GARBAGE at dental hygiene before this. I have no idea how I ever thought I was good at flossing or brushing.

So, game audio. Recording. Sounds. FANTASTIC SOUNDING SHIT.

How does all this relate?

Here’s the thing — I LOOOOOOOVE making sounds. I love crushing them, smushing them, lightly buttering them in oil, all that stuff. I got a good system for getting stuff out the door.

But editing?

Chopping stuff up so it’s in a usable format

Adding Metadata

Categorizing stuff so it’s neat and pretty

FUCK NAH DUDE. HAAAAAAATE THAT SHIT. KILL ME NOW.

It’s been the bane of my goddamn professional career that I can have fun and do decent stuff but am wracked with GUILT that none of it is captured or catagorized. I am proud that a couple years ago I sorted it into gigantic “dump piles”.

It’s so bad.

But think back to like clean teeth. If I can position my good engine next to my REALLY REALLY bad one — if I can find the thread that is finding my toothbrush next to my meds, I can be an INCREDIBLE recordist.

All I gotta do is be kind to myself. Maybe share with some folks to get ideas to pop the cap of the secret. And even if the secret to getting the editing pipeline right-sided is specific to me, the truth is I bet most people struggle with IBTU’s. Learn how to slay IBTU’s and conquer mighty war geece!

Learning How to Brush My Teeth is How I Am Going to Crack the Editing Pipeline was originally published in Art Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So, I came in second for the Technical Sound Designer at Disruptive Games last week. I was a bit of a mess, so it was definitely time to take some time off, rest, and reassess.

So where to go from here?

First off, like most folks I obsess over little details (shit, should I have called that a method or a function?) until I truly feel there’s nothing left to say. Nothing particularly groundbreaking. Next, I take all those little details and try to find a commonality towards actionable steps I can take to improve myself as an artist, as a person, whatever.

For this particular interview series, I personally feel that my struggle wasn’t the technical skill. My failure was being able to express my technical in a spoken format, calmly, in a high-pressure environment like an interview. Oddly enough, I think I would have bombed out if I hadn’t been writing these articles about technical design as opposed to “just having a nervous delivery”. So, that also gives me a clue about what steps I could take to improve.

The one thing I would highly recommend is finding a relatively similarly skilled peer like yourself and networking deeply with them. This is obviously about trust; but one of the huge advantages I have is actually two peers who have my back and are willing to say “yeah, you screwed up X”.

I admit, I’m a bit of an external processor when dealing with interviews, and like, maybe that’s me not you. Having someone objective is super important to me to keep the crazies at bay. Also helpful emotionally when shit sucks hardcore. It’s really hard not to look at your peers as competition, but it just….isn’t like that. The company is going to pick the person who fits right for whatever reason. I don’t know how anyone makes it in without a strong cohort fighting back to back and supporting each other-it’s the biggest thing I don’t see in the people I am mentoring. Maybe that’s just what I see but *shrug*.

Second off, and more importantly, it’s essential to take the win that you are given and to not think about things as black and white or fail and win states. Sure, I technically failed at getting that job and I can be cut up and frazzled about how I am never going to get to work on a cool game; but that’s taking a very short myopic view of things.

First win is this: I think I am sufficiently technical to work on a game. Not just this interview but another series has indicated I am more technical than “the average sound person”. While this is kinda obvious when you think about my background being a solo audio dev, it does mean that I know I will crush any technical interviews I encounter (as long as I can level up my words). It also refreshingly means I don’t have to grow technically by a factor of 100 for my next role.

Second win is this: I made it to the finals. I feel a lot of folks I mentor tend to get bogged down in failing to get screens, in failing to progress past screens, and ultimately in failing to get the job. Anything past the actual interview with the hiring authority is “in God’s hands”. So many tiny things can go wrong (I definitely had a few). Take the win you are given.

Dealing with Reality. was originally published in Audio Implementation 2023 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.